Preparation …

October 31st, 2006

I’m preparing for a trip to the Lake District. So my home looks like a Chinese laundry, as clothes are drying everywhere – not a tumble dryer fan myself. And I keep remembering stuff I need to take with me. So piles are building up off “mustn’t forget this” stuff. I have managed to pack for a trip before and completely forgotten my card reader – not good!

I’ve given up trying to get my telephone to act as a modem via Bluetooth so I can download emails on the road – Vodafone bounced my call off to Nokia – Nokia insisted I join their club before running for the hills on discovering I’m a Apple Mac user and telling me to call Mac support.

I’ve gotten it to work successfully in the past, but I really can’t be bothered to listen to Elevator music any longer, as I think I need to call Vodafone back to get their GPRS service enabled on my account. It’s obviously not something most people use. It’s swept into the too difficult box. Keswick has two sources of Internet access anyway – so I’ll use them. It’ll probably be a lot cheaper – and a week off from checking emails everyday won’t hurt.

Part of my preparation is to research locations. I’ve been to the Lake District before and have a list of places I’d like to return to. I’m also using Google to source other people’s pictures of the area – this gives me an idea of other possible locations, and I’ve checked the more arty websites to see what they have on this subject too, as I will be shooting photographs suitable for my stock photography library and fine art on this trip.

The other source of ideas is books on the area. I’ve found one that offers detailed descriptions of locations, so in theory I should be able to find them! The book is 20 years old – so paths/access may have changed.

I then mark all the possible locations onto an ordnance survey map, so I can plan a route, and have a rough idea what I want to photograph in any given day. Once I’m in the location I also check out the local Tourist Information and look at the postcards on sale.

In theory I should end up with a long list of locations, but in practise – some of the locations & ideas will only work at certain times of the year. The sun is much lower & the light generally softer in late autumn, and I may have gotten a picture idea from a postcard shot in high summer, when the lighting conditions will be vastly different. I also prefer to photograph when the weather is a bit moody – and not all chocolate box locations will work – photographically speaking – in these conditions.

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